Deals on Facebook arrives, ready to take on Groupon

Businesses in Atlanta, Dallas, San Diego, and San Francisco can now offer …

Not sure you need yet another deal site in your life? Too bad, because if you have a Facebook account, it's there already. Facebook announced Tuesday morning that it was launching Deals on Facebook, a Groupon-like deal center that allows businesses in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego, and San Francisco to offer steep discounts to Facebook users. And despite our tongue-in-cheek reaction, the new Deals offering is likely to take off simply because of its heavy Facebook integration and Facebook's massive built-in audience.

Deals on Facebook is launching today in five cities, but Facebook says it hopes to expand to other cities in the future. (When you go to the Deals page now and you live in another city, it asks you to sign up to be notified when the feature will be available to you.) A typical deal page looks just like you'd expect Groupon or Living Social mishmashed with Facebook to look—you can buy the coupon directly through Facebook and then post it to your wall, or share it with friends. Each deal is "Like"-able as well and you can post comments on the deal's Facebook wall, adding an extra social layer on top of your typical coupon site.

Deals on Facebook differs from Facebook's other deal-related product, Check-In Deals, which was launched late last year. That feature works with Facebook's check-in system (called Places) and allows businesses to offer discounts to users who have checked in there. It's a little more immediate—you're already at a restaurant or a coffee shop, and now you get a free bagel with your purchase of coffee. Deals on Facebook, on the other hand, lets you plan a little further in advance for bigger jaunts, like a trip to the aquarium or that skydiving adventure you've been fantasizing about.

As usual, Facebook is trying to make it easy for its user base to get deals from other places too—the company says it's working on bringing discounts from the likes of OpenTable, Gilt City, Plum District, and a handful of others onto the site as well. It's possible that you've never even heard of many of those, which is kind of the point—Facebook is hoping to compete with the big names, not these tiny specialty sites. Still, with the recent launch of the Google Offers beta, there are plenty of big names available to compete with, so Facebook will have to expand quickly if it wants to nab mindshare from potential Google customers or take advantage of burned out Groupon users.